Time After Time
by WIWJ
Summary: Blair and Todd AU from Halloween. She asked if he was alright. He should have just said no. Not sure where this will take me, but probably not Port Charles. LOL.
1. Chapter 1

I spend a lot of time thinking about Halloween.. and how it could have all been so different.

…

Blair Cramer couldn't deny that his abrupt exit on Halloween had thrown her. She knew something was wrong. The something was thick and heavy in the air between them, his soft eyes pleading with her, begging her to make **it **better. She did not; however, know what **it** was and she was currently trying to pretend like she didn't care.

She had decided soon after the return of the True Todd to pretend that she'd made it a practice in the last eight years not to give help unless it was asked for. She would not go fishing in the head of Todd Manning, he'd have to spill. She had also taken time to calculate the odds of him actually spilling... they were not in his favor. So when she returned from trick or treating she missed the way her body felt heavy for a moment, and the fuzzy way her head spun when Todd Manning, the real Todd Manning, showed up. She'd been vaguely distracted as she wrestled the bucket of candy from Sam before sending him up to bed with a quick kiss. So when she'd gone to hide the mounds of sugar, she'd been down right surprised to see his ghostly figure sitting at her kitchen table in the dark.

"Todd!" She yelped. "You scared the crap out of me. I thought I'd seen a ghost!"

"Lot of that going around." He mumbled.

"What are you doing in here?" She moved towards him. "I thought you went back to Vicky's?"

"I tried." He whispered eerily, she watched the back of his head carefully before taking a few more steps.

"She kick you out already?" Blair huffed, half teasing. He didn't respond. "Todd?" She reached out to him now, her hand falling softly on his tight shoulders. They melted like snow in the rain, his hands coming up to hers grasping it gently, in alternating strokes. "What is it?"

"Ask me again." He breathed.

"Ask you..?" She knew. She knew the question; she just needed to hear it from him. Blair needed his need. She sat beside him, her hand slipping down his arm. His own followed, fingers still gripped around hers.

"Ask me if I'm alright." He looked at her then, pleading eyes dark with worry and fear of rejection.

"You're not alright." She breathed both their heads shaking slowly as he mirrored her. She brought up her hand and traced her scar with thumb.

"I'm not alright."


	2. Chapter 2

Todd Manning was going to jump out of his skin if he sat there one minute longer.

"Okay." He announced lightly, slapping is thighs as he got up from the chair. "That's it. I'm not doing it."

"Sit!" The volume of her voice even startled Blair. She winced as he winced, pushing her palms against his chest before glancing around the quiet waiting room. "Sit."

"I have a better idea." He mumbled frantically. "We go home, and continue to pretend like this isn't happening."

"Todd." She scolded.

"Fine we go home and I confess." He shook his head as if that would be a piece of cake, his lips pursing as he did. "Walk right into John McBain." He pushed back from her and extended his hands like they were ready to be cuffed.

"Don't you think we should find out if you ACTUALLY killed Victor before you confess to the LPD?" She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. "That's an important thing to know, right?" Her eyebrows rose at his silence, she turned back to look at him.

Todd blinked at her, the left side of his mouth drawn up in a smirk.

"What?" She snorted.

"You." The other side of his mouth lifted into at truer smile.

"Me?" She counted.

"You believe in me more than I believe in myself." He stood perfectly still, watching the way his words played across her face. Her eyes softened almost to the point of tears. "I tell you I killed my brother and you.." He swallowed hard slowly dropping back into the chair. "You refuse to believe it."

"Well." She shook her head a little before rolling her eyes again in disbelief of what she was about to say. "You shouldn't believe everything your dead mother tells you." She whispered, moving across the room to sit beside him.

He snorted at her comment before turning to look at her.

"I'm not sure letting some woman poke around in my brain is a great idea either." He smirked at her.

"God only knows what she'll find in there." Blair smiled.

"Exactly." Todd agreed. "I mean it could turn out that I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby. Or that I am the Lindbergh baby."

"I don't think that would even surprise me at this point." She exhaled slowly.

"Me either." He pursed his lips before tilting his head to lean on her shoulder. She nuzzled her cheek into his hair, letting her eyes slip shut. "Not after everything else." He sighed loudly. "How do we know we can trust this head shrink anyway?"

"Doran says this woman's the best." Blair told him calmly, running her fingers down the back of his hair before standing up again. "She has a lot of practice with cases like yours."

"Mother's brainwashing their twin sons?"

"Not exactly." The soft lilting voice snapped both of their attention to the woman standing in the door way. "But not too far off."

"Are you Dr. Evans?" Blair suddenly felt as apprehensive as Todd.

"Yes." She extended her hand to her. "Dr. Marlana Evans. You must be Mrs. Manning?"

...

"Then the hallucination of my dead mother dropped the bomb on me." Todd paused. "Not the same bomb she tried to blow up my entire family with mind you, but another bomb. She says I killed Victor."

"And then you remembered killing Victor?" Dr. Evans said slowly.

"Yes." He whispered before shaking his head. "No." He looked at Blair. "I don't know. At first it was like remembering a dream."

"But the more times you remember it the stronger and more real it becomes?" Todd returned his gaze to the doctor.

"How do you know this?"

"It sounds to me, that it's possible this is a planted memory."

"What's that mean?" Blair moved from the door she'd been standing in front of and settled on the arm of the couch where Todd was sitting.

"Well, with someone as adept at memory implantation as your mother obviously was, it's possible that she may have implanted dormant false memories in your subconscious that could be 'triggered' at her command." Todd slowly shook his head. "Did she have any time alone with you before the memory of killing you brother surfaced?"

"While I was in lock up." His eyes scanned the wall as he thought about it. "And at the pier before Tomas showed up, before I.." Blair laid her hand on his arm as he spoke. "Before I shot her."

"It's entirely possible that she was able to trigger something then." Marlana Evan's bit her lip before nodding. "And I'm afraid that's not all of it." Todd wrinkled is nose at her. "She could have implanted other memories, or even commands."

"Commands?" Blair froze.

"When my husband was programmed it wasn't just with memories." She held Blair's eyes in her own. "It was with tasks."

"Oh my God Todd." Todd Manning looked at his wife.. ex wife.. wife? He made a mental note to figure out which exactly the currently were before swallowing hard.

"She.." He looked back at the Dr. "She said 'kill your family like a thousand times.. how do I?"

"Todd. No. Stop it you would never-."

"You should go home." He stood up suddenly moving away from her quickly. "Blair, you should go away from-." His maybe wife continued her protest, moving towards him. "Get away from me."

"That's not necessary." Dr. Evan's said sharply, as both of them turned towards her.

"You just told me I could be a robotic killing machine primed and ready to go and not even know it. How can I ever know if she's safe? If my kids, my sister.." He swallowed hard. "I may have already killed my brother."

"There are methods I can use."

"Methods?" Blair asked softly batting away Todd's attempts to keep her at arms length.

"Hypnosis." The woman said softly, Blair looped her own arm through Todd's elbow as his head snapped towards the psychiatrist. "We can use hypnosis."


End file.
